


where your light does not lead

by Allegory



Category: onmyoji arena, 陰陽師 | Onmyoji (Video Game)
Genre: A lot of emotional pain, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Relationship Problems, Sex, Yaoi, ichimoku can't deal with life in general, ichimoku is sad (as usual), im not sorry, onmyoji arena - Freeform, onmyōji, poor boy, seimei is kinkier than i intended, susabi can't deal with intimacy, susabi is a dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-01-24 15:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18573958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: Ichimoku took a step back.“I should go.”“What?”“Away. From you.”A moment of utter confusion ensued. Susabi said, his voice hoarse and strange to his own ears, “Where?”“Just away. Until you learn to appreciate me.”Anger flooded Susabi’s veins. He let the poisonous sensation swell inside him, and when he spoke again it was with a hostile growl. “You’re ridiculous.”“Yeah,” Ichimoku laughed. “That’s all I am to you, nowadays.”





	1. Chapter 1

“Ren. Come here for a moment.”

Susabi was calling to him from the other side of the field. Ichimoku, though engaged with the sight of the stars before him, turned away and walked over to him. On the eastern horizon all was bright, a constellation of stars shining down on Heian-Kyo and all its little lanterns. On the west, where Susabi stood, stretched nothing but miles and miles of redwood and endless darkness.

In that darkness Susabi’s eyes were a cool grey, pensive and mysterious. As Ichimoku came near him he recognized the familiar scent of thyme and sandalwood from his journeys in foreign lands. He wondered what strange trees those shoulders of his had brushed agianst; what the constellations looked like from another part of the world.

Susabi was, unknown to most of his other acquaintances, reluctant to dwell in the light. For a man of moon and stars to shed the cloak of his knowledge, to hate it even in the privacy of his own being, was not the most natural observation one could make. Perhaps, because sometimes Ichimoku still struggled to see on his right side, he could understand some of his hesitance. To be in the light was not only to see; it was to act according to its rules, its peoples, to essentially be enslaved.

Susabi reached out and placed the back of his hand against Ichimoku’s cheek. His skin was cold, sublime, and they both felt as though something surreptitious was on the cusp of occurring. Ichimoku leaned into his touch, allowed him to explore even the planes of his face that were so deeply entrenched in shame. Here was the eye that he had sacrificed to save thousands of people. Here was the symbol of his retreat from their world, the centuries of pathetic waiting, the loss of his being.

Litter. He knew he was better than it; it still haunted him, made him think of Susabi as someone beyond his reach. Divided between light and dark. Susabi, catching the flicker of emotion on his face, wrapped his arms around Ichimoku. All of a sudden their reservations fell, as they always did after a long period away from each other.

“You need to take care of yourself while I’m gone,” Susabi said.

“Again?”

“Yes.”

Ichimoku was quiet. Susabi had just returned a week before, and the question of his leaving again hadn’t been brought up until then. Desperate for some leverage, Susabi continued,

“No one cares for you here. You mustn’t give so much of yourself. Each time I come back you withdraw more and more into yourself.”

It was true. Ichimoku knew it. He thought of the hours he had spent by the balcony of their shared apartment, looking out at the steady stream of people preparing for festivities. The nights made it worse- the nights of laughter and good cheer, the chatter of strange voices from faraway provinces, music, sake, singing, while he remained watching above them all, imperceptible as a mote of dust.

“No one cares for me,” he echoed, looking up into Susabi’s eyes. “And it’s never occurred to you that you’re the reason?”

“…I know, Ren.”

“You’re going to leave anyway.”

“…walk with me.”

Susabi made an impatient gesture with his hand as he said those words. He started off towards the dense trees, the total darkness, but stopped when he realized Ichimoku wasn’t following him. He turned around and felt a crushing pressure in his chest at the sight of Ichimoku’s face, so pained behind its walls of dignity. On the exterior one could not quite see that; one saw that Ren was beautiful in his sadness, in the way only paintings could convey. But it was eating away at him. Susabi could sense it, almost, from the minute turn of his head, the ache of his silence.

So Susabi, tail between his legs, returned to him. Such embarrassments meant nothing; he had not, after all, the constitution created by centuries of betrayal that had taken so great a toll on Ichimoku. In a rush of emotion, Susabi was inclined to do something irrational- to kiss him, suck the pale plane of his throat, slide a hand inside his robe, to feel, to make the tension between them physical and by consummating the pain end it. And in the morning they would wake up side by side with only a vague sense that something false had occurred.

Ichimoku took a step back.

“I should go.”

“What?”

“Away. From you.”

A moment of utter confusion ensued. Susabi said, his voice hoarse and strange to his own ears, “Where?”

“Just away. Until you learn to appreciate me.”

Anger flooded Susabi’s veins. He let the poisonous sensation swell inside him, and when he spoke again it was with a hostile growl. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Ichimoku laughed. “That’s all I am to you, nowadays.”

Thoughtlessly Susabi put a hand on Ichimoku’s shoulder. Almost instantly Ichimoku slapped him away, as though that calloused hand had never touched him before, and by some imperial command should never do so. Then, they were both as cold and foreign as stars in two ends of the galaxy. And without waiting for some reconciliation, some hopeful return of love that he’d fallen prey to in the past, Ichimoku turned and started down the cliff.

“Ren.”

It was the last word Susabi spoke that night. When he returned to their apartment Ichimoku wasn’t there, though his things remained, a collection of knicknacks he’d accumulated in the years waiting for Susabi to return. The only trace of Susabi in their room were the souvenirs he’d brought back from distant places, small trinkets and gestures of remembrance, apologies, really, for hanging Ichimoku on a string. Now the string was finally cut, and all that remained was the heavy guilt the spirit’s belongings laid upon him.

*

“ _Ah!_ S-Seimei…”

It was good. Ichimoku was, as a rule of thumb, not picky about sex. It was carnal; it felt good; before Susabi he had touched himself often just to take the edge off the near permanent ache of his memories. He had done it with a lot of other men, too, human or spirit, whoever seemed interested in a tryst. Sometimes they had been violent with him, had used him, really, as orifices for their own sexual release. He’d minded, but not enough to stop.

Now, having left Susabi, he felt as though he was returning to his old self, mating with a beautiful but strange man, allowing pleasure to suffuse and drown out his darker thoughts. He liked the simplicity of his body, how it reacted with such constancy to the ministrations of other men.

Seimei was an excellent partner. He was, rather unlike Susabi, a giver. Cautious, concerned that Ichimoku should feel the sweet fruit of their labor. Hard as Ichimoku tried to block out thoughts of Susabi, he recalled the passionate violences they had committed together, the way Susabi had of shoving him against a wall and taking for himself what he liked, but only having asked for Ichimoku’s consent, ensuring him that what they did with their bodies was separate from how they were, clothed and cerebral. In the past, before all of Susabi’s departures began, things had been different. He had been careful. They had made love as though drinking from the same dish of sake. Ichimoku had felt valued, necessary, loved- then.

Ichimoku reached his climax, not pleased by Seimei’s generosity but vaguely annoyed at himself that his thought at the pinnacle of pleasure should be Susabi. Having put so many miles between them, having replaced Susabi’s naked body with someone else’s, he felt cheated by his own mind which had returned so willingly to that selfish man. And in the dawn, when he woke not to an empty cot but with Seimei draping an arm over him, he was filled by the pain of the night before that returned twofold. The falling moon, just visible on the horizon, watched him like the half-lidded eye of some distant voyeur. 


	2. Chapter 2

The thought of Ichimoku’s pink hair haunted Susabi.

It had been his hair that first caught Susabi’s attention. In the light it was pale, austere, sterile in a way he couldn’t quite pin down; at night, it melted into the darkness, spilling like ink around his face.

Susabi woke alone that morning, thinking of how peaceful his sleep had been. It was easy for him to block out his agonies, a useful mechanism that had developed to help him cope with the uncertainties of his life. Yet the longer he laid there the longer he thought of Ichimoku, and the way it felt to thread his fingers through the younger spirit’s soft hair. He thought of how sometimes, after their physical intimacy, he didn’t feel the nauseating need to leave the room, and would wake up with the weight of Ichimoku’s slender leg propped atop of his. And how when a breeze came in through the window, the sound of the Ichimoku's anklet bells rang, lulling the anxious knot in Susabi’s chest.

They had established the morning after they’d first lain together, breaths still reeking of sake, that Susabi was an issue. As a person he was difficult; as a lover, near impossible. So often had he moved from one place to another, one situation to another, that the idea of a long-standing relationship was near inconceivable. Ichimoku had insisted. And Susabi, knowing that he loved the younger man, and perhaps still coming off the carnal warmth of their bodies, had agreed.

 _Should I have?_ He probed himself. The answer was a resounding yes. He had no regrets about having held Ichimoku. Ichimoku was the only good thing that had happened to him in hundreds of years, drifting from one land to another performing the same tasks, the same exorcisms, just with different sights and sounds. In a world that was constantly shifting, he knew Ichimoku was waiting for him back home, and the thought of having someone who was the same comforted him.

But he had done nothing for Ichimoku. Nothing but take his body and use it to fulfill his own visceral needs once every couple of years. With each reunion the two fell head-over-heels in love with each other again, forgetting the hardship, the discontentment, the unspoken thoughts. But Ichimoku had never really forgotten. He was just, as he had always been, exceptionally good at concealing his personal world.

*

Ichimoku stepped into the hot spring, glad to be left alone for a while. Seimei had gone out right as they began undressing; some of the villagers had come with information about a spirit up in the mountains, and it was necessary as always for Seimei to tend to their tearful remunerations.

The waters were hot, not scalding, but not comfortably warm either. He liked the sensation of heat working its way through his body, which despite Seimei’s care during intercourse had blossomed with bruises on his thighs and hips. _Like overripe fruit,_ Susabi had murmured once. That time, they were in a bath together after one of their earliest bedroom trysts. Susabi had worked scented soap into Ichimoku’s hair, run his rough and calloused fingers up and down the arc of Ichimoku’s head, when suddenly Ichimoku teared up. It wasn’t visible with all the steam and liquid, and Susabi was murmuring such sweet nothings that he could hardly have noticed. Ichimoku had curled up and let himself indulge in the sensation and the dream that perhaps, for once, something good would last.

He curled up then in the hot spring. The scent of thyme reminded him bitterly of Susabi, and he submerged his face in the water, letting the heat coax the weariness out of him. For one reason or another, he slid a hand across his thigh, and as the minutes wore on he felt his member stir to an idle interest. There was no one else; the hot spring had been closed off for Seimei’s private use. Ichimoku laid back against the tiles and spread his legs out under water. He looked up, trying to imagine something good- anything good- but the sun was too sharp, and he winced at the intensity of the light.

He thought of the first time he and Susabi had kissed. At the summer festival, they’d been annoyed at each other over some slight miscommunication- Seimei had put Ichimoku in charge of some great magister’s arrival, and he’d messed it up dealing with other things Susabi asked of him. In fact, Susabi’s requests had been drunken mumblings, though Ichimoku had taken him seriously. Afterwards, weary after the supervision, all the spirits had gone down to a bar for some sake, toasting to Ichimoku for putting his all into the event. Susabi had stopped him outside the bar and pulled him aside to talk. Only, they'd annoyed each other even more, and just as everything was about to rupture Susabi kissed him. A revelation occurred to Ichimoku then. The incredible sensation that followed then still lingered on his lips.

“Thinking of someone?”

Ichimoku startled. He turned around, embarrassed to be caught in the act. Seimei smiled at him.

“That’s quite all right. I think I’ve seen enough of your naked body to be perturbed.” Seimei dipped his feet into the water next to Ichimoku. “So, what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing, Master Seimei. Just…”

 _Just help me forget._ The afternoon was cool, and in the distance an outcrop of overgrown bamboo rustled in the wind. Ichimoku pressed his lips against Seimei’s thigh and, receiving the silent acquiesence of Seimei, suckled quietly, attentively, with a childlike innocence that belied his true nature. Soon his head was between Seimei’s legs, sliding laconically up and down his girth. The risqué scent of sex filled the air, and Ichimoku basked in it, let the one thing he knew guide him to the harbor of safety and comfort.

“You are,” Seimei breathed, his snowy hair framing his face. “Difficult to resist.”

The compliment made Ichimoku’s heart swell with pleasure. He glanced up with his warm and slick mouth still around Seimei, trying his best to take in the whole of his length. The idea of being a whore occurred to him- certainly, he figured, that was what Seimei thought of him. A needy spirit with no other merit. Not even vision good enough to see that Seimei was coming, to adjust the speed of his strokes to the elder man’s pleasure; in the end, Seimei did come, but the both of them felt that the whole affair had been lackluster somehow, their bodies together but their spirits wide apart.

Ichimoku continued to suckle his tip for a while, as a sort of embarrassed apology for the situation. Seimei put his hand under Ichimoku’s chin and lifted his face up. For a while they stared at one another. Then Ichimoku swallowed.

“Ah-“ Seimei began. “I’m- sorry. I forgot-“

“It’s fine,” Ichimoku smiled. It was a brilliant sight; night or day, one found it hard not to be compelled by the mysterious aura that hovered just beyond human perception.

Presently he rose a little from the water, and the pink buds of his nipples looked ripe for the taking. Unwittingly, Seimei found himself reaching forward, placing his hand over the expanse of Ichimoku’s skin. It was the wrong place to be carnal. Not that such a thought had ever stopped man or spirit.


	3. Chapter 3

Youko was coming off his high when the knocking started.

For a while, he was completely oblivious to it. He lay back against Ootengu’s bed, basking in the clean scent of Ootengu’s feathers, his cum puddling the sheets. Ootengu was still thrusting inside him, finishing slower but more strongly, as was usual between them. Youko could feel the intense orgasm that wracked Ootengu’s body when it arrived, and even in his exhaustion he peered to catch a glimpse of Ootengu’s raw features, free from the confines of work and responsibility. He could look so tender. So different from the face he presented in daylight.

When he had ridden the last wave of his peak, he rolled over and lay beside Youko, pressing their sweaty skin together. Suddenly he said, his eyes closed, “There’s someone looking for you.”

“What?”

Youko looked behind him. Sure enough, there was a silhouette behind the curtains, though how Ootengu knew it was looking for him remained a mystery. Slowly, half-heartedly, Youko rose from bed. Ootengu let him, even though a furrow appeared between his brows, indicative of his consternation at the disturbance.

When Youko had dressed, he saw that the man standing behind the door was none other than Lord Susabi. Only, worse for wear, and possibly drunk beneath the steady guise he tried so often to maintain.

“This is…quite unexpected.”

Susabi did not respond. He entered the room without permission and, casting a disinterested sidelong glance at Ootengu burrowed beneath a thick tangle of robes, proceeded to a low table. Youko joined him at the table, the cool breeze of night sifting in through the windows.

“Tea?”

“No, thank you.”

“Quite unusual of you to come at such an hour. Or any hour at all.”

Susabi smiled, but it was a bitter one. Briefly Youko thought of the short trysts of their younger years, when they had been organized into the same training group. Youko could remember a time when he had genuinely loved Susabi- had thought with all his heart that he wanted to be with this man, though he still tried to flirt with girls, to convince himself he was not an aberration. Susabi had touched him in the same places Ootengu did; out of respect for that much, Youko felt indebted to his ex-lover.

Though he knew better then. He knew, after being with Ootengu, that Susabi was not suited to a life of conjugality. That no matter how deeply he seemed to love, there was a part of him too fractured to withstand intimacy.

Youko knew, too, what had broken him, though it had taken a long time for the truth to come, and even then it had done so in bits and pieces. A word here; a rumour there. Of all places, it was at Miketsu’s residence that Youko uncovered the mystery behind Susabi’s separation. The tsunami. The beach trips he had always refused. The way he looked at humans, spirits, gods, as though they were no better than the dust beneath his own feet.

“Indulge me,” Susabi murmured. “On matters of the province. Where am I likely to go next?”

The sound of feathers rustling caught both of their attentions.

“It’s in a month’s time,” Youko reasoned. He was not, naturally, keen to discuss politics and work while his thighs were still aching so sweetly from having Ootengu thrust in between them.

“I’m going soon. Preferably by the end of the week. I cannot stay here.”

Youko thought of the conversation he’d had with Miketsu. The two of them sitting by the pond of her residence, the sound of water trickling from a bamboo pipe. Though a part of him was relieved to be free of Susabi, of the burden of loving him, Youko still felt in part culpable for that look on his face. It was the same look he had worn when Youko had told him, gently, that they were done. The same look he had worn when Ootengu had kissed Youko in front of him, to make clear the new boundaries, new relationships. The same look that mirrored the scars on his back and arms that he never spoke about.

*

Sometimes Susabi could still hear the waves surging around him, could feel the icy waters stinging his skin. Sometimes he could be sitting next to Ren, laughing about some silly scene on the streets below, and the crushing agony in his chest would return for no particular reason. He couldn’t understand it. He knew only that he felt an insurmountable urge to be alone, to reject Ren’s soft laughter, reject their pleasant morning chats.

Even during sex, the sensation pricked him. It was difficult, though he never showed it. No matter how beautiful Ren looked straddling him, Susabi’s awareness that he was in a submissive position, the same position, really, that he had been in as the villagers pelted him with stones, sent waves of nausea rolling through his body. Sometimes he blanked out; certainly, he could still look like he enjoyed it. Could still moan, still turn Ren around and take charge, but each thrust disturbed some inner part of him, and he finished always with a sinister knot in his stomach.

_And what about the better times?_

The time he had taken Ren with him to a village in the mountains. When they had sat together by a meadow, the blue sky stretching wide overhead. All around there had been no sign of life, no sound save the rustling of wheat stalks, and for once Susabi had mustered the courage to tell Ren he loved him. Not as an act of defiance or frustration or sadness, but because he had wanted to, and meant it with all his heart. Ren knew how hard it was for Susabi to admit it.

*

Perhaps that was why Ren couldn’t forget him.

Days. Weeks. Months passed, with no contact between either of them. Susabi was travelling further east than he had ever before, busying himself with matters of provincial peace. Ren stayed in Seimei’s quarters. He had first thought of all he would do- free from months of endless waiting, he had seen himself soaring to distant planes, swimming in the clear lakes of mysterious regions.

But reality was different. Time felt to him as though it had stopped. Or at least he wished for it to do so. He woke up day after day gazing out at the bamboo thickets surrounding Seimei’s apartment, leaves growing and shrivelling, life continuing on at its natural pace. He wanted to stop it; to live in his head, to swallow each grain of rice without thinking of how little use he was.

There was no point in his participation anyway. A half-blind spirit. Not a god in power, not even human in his most basic capabilities. All the strength he had once possessed- his mighty shield of wind, the ravaging storms he could once brew and conquer- had slowly but surely seeped away. What remained was, essentially, a husk; a pretty face, a number of orifices, and the slow decay of an uncertain existence.

One afternoon, Seimei returned to the noise of a pot smashing. He ran into the kitchen to see Ren curled up on the floor, sheet white from the agonizing burns on his hands and feet. Not a single sound of pain escaped his lips, except when Seimei lifted him and in a panic accidentally knocked his injured feet against a table. Ren whimpered; his grip tightened around Seimei’s robe, but that was all.

He was unable to walk for the next few days. Seimei had his trusted friend Ebisu over to make poultices for his wounds. It was, strangely, during Ebisu’s gentle treatment of him that Ren caved; after so long a period since he arrived, those long-stifled tears finally rolled free from his eyes. He smothered them, covering his face with his arm, saying nothing though the tips of his ears grew as crimson as fresh blood beside candlelight.

It was more than Susabi. It was an old wound that had festered for so long that even he had ceased being cognizant of it.

The wounds eventually healed. As Seimei washed off the last of his poultices, he gazed at the dark scars ran up Ren’s legs, not deep, but grave enough to be around for a while. Seimei ran his fingers down the curve of Ren’s ankle, concerned that his nerves wouldn’t work as they used to. When he looked up, a chill ran down his spine at the sight of Ren’s bitter smile.

“Why?” was all he managed.

Ichimoku blinked at him, silent for a while. Then he leaned down and held a lock of Seimei’s hair in his hand, his long eyelashes glinting from the rays of the full moon. “It’s a little like optimism,” Ichimoku said. “Hoping when there is none, and then feeling the small pleasure of letting myself go.”

A moth landed on the lamp inside the apartment, casting its long and distorted shadow across the black grass.

Seimei heaved a sigh. He took Ichimoku’s hand away from his hair and rested them both on his lap.

“You will tell me, Ichimokuren, what exactly is paining you so much. And this is an order, for your own benefit.”

Ichimoku dragged his hand down between his thighs. Seimei was- surprised, for a moment, then realized he shouldn’t be. It was a tactic Ichimoku fell back on often, largely because it worked. Human, spirit, god- lust, because of its harmless façade, was a temptation difficult to resist.

Seimei pulled away. He felt an overwhelming urge to kiss Ichimoku, to assure him he was loved, but knew it would defeat a greater purpose.

“Tell me,” he commanded.

“I am a very old spirit,” Ichimoku said, still smiling. “If I perish, very few will remember me. Perhaps you might, Master Seimei. Out of your heart’s goodness.”

Goodness. What a peculiar way of describing his feelings for Ichimoku.  

“Is there a threat on your life?” Seimei asked.

“Nothing of the sort.”

Silence. Seimei glanced at Ren’s feet.

“The teapot. Very clumsy of you.”

“Very clumsy indeed. Won’t happen again.”

Later that night, while lying in bed together, Seimei whispered into the cool night air the thoughts that had been so difficult to manage in his head: “I remember every moment we have spent together. I know your heart is elsewhere- it has never been mine to keep. Nevertheless, it’s been a decade since we’ve known each other, Ren. If you were to perish, it would break me.”

He couldn’t know if Ichimoku heard him, or if the latter was already fast asleep. The very next day Seimei was to set off to a remote village that required his immediate attention. Against everything he knew was right about the onmyoji’s code of conduct- to keep a clear line between personal and public affairs- and against his own aching love for Ichimoku, he did it. He made Ichimoku travel with him, knowing fully well who would be arriving at the village at the same time.  

**Author's Note:**

> if you play onmyoji arena my username is Bluejuice (Asia server) and I main support, let's be friends while i think of more angsty ichimoku stories hahaha


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